What its like
by An Old Nemesor
Summary: Some time ago, Aaron Dembski-Bowden wrote a story about what it is like to be a chaos space marine, in order to dispel some misunderstandings and to help people understand what that sort of life is truly like. I now do the same for the Necrons.


Let's say your name is Se'bakyr, and you are the Phaerakh of the Nehekhara dynasty. It is a client dynast, so despite you status you are often forced to work under the heel of another dynasty. Maybe they conquered you long ago, or perhaps it was an alliance of convenience with a dynasty so much stronger than you own. Perhaps it was an alliance of equals, one where the wording of the contract was not read carefully enough until it was too late, or perhaps it was due to an ancient debt to large and great to ever fully repay. Perhaps the silent king himself ordered it for whatever reason. Perhaps this is how it has always been since the dawn of time, or a millennia or a century or maybe just a decade. Perhaps it doesn't really matter. The Phaeron is unreasonable and brash, demanding and taking what he wants. That is okay, as their Phaeron is often busy and thus it is the hyper competent and often overworked Nemesor you are forced to serve, as much as that term ravages your pride. You like Nemesor Xanxas, as he is harsh, but kind in his own convoluted way. He is often busy, so instead of directly leading your dynast he often co-leads it with you. He leads well, and during the beginning of the end for the Necrontyr (not that you knew of course), during the first wars of secession, you become fast friends. He gains much glory and honor during that time, and his fame quickly eclipses your own. But enough about the others, let's look at you.

Perhaps on the tabletop you are an Overlord, either bare or fully decked out in all the war gear points could buy. Perhaps you are something else, as the barebones rules are mere guidelines, an assistance in understanding the complex and deep faction that was once the Necrontyr. But let's focus on what really matters.

You meet another race one day, old ones they call themselves and old they are indeed. They call themselves gods and behind closed doors you laugh at their audacity, sharing a traditional beverage as you ponder the future. But then, tragedy strikes. It is revealed that, in their immense power, they could rid the Necrontyr of the mutations and cancers that litter their bodies, so ingrained that even those with the power to bend time and tame stars can't exorcise it. But how could this be a tragedy? How could such a miracle be a horror in disguise, a terrible twist in the fate of your race? You had no idea, as you partied and celebrated with you kin, even that uptight Phaeron who you bend knee to cracking a smile, how could this ever be a bad thing? Because the next day, ashen faced, sorrowful ambassadors return, explaining that they refused to help.

How could they. HOW DARE THEY! They, who were born on a soft paradise like world, surrounded by plenty and with little too no natural predators. They, who evolved so hard that they no longer needed base necessities like food and water to sustain them. They, who were given the galaxy unopposed and were so lazy that they created another race to manage it for them, not to protect them or because they couldn't, but because _they wouldn't_. They, who were given an entire separate universe as a plaything, and even gained for themselves and their children, these fancy weak self-entitled arrogant FOOLS named oh so sanctimoniously the _Eldar_ , the name tasting like a bitter **poison** to your lips, actual, functional, immortality. Immortality, that which your race had been searching for since time immemorial, just GIVEN to another race. At least these old ones had to work for it, the Eldar just got it for free. FREE! Where was you immortality, your paradise? Where were the fruits of your ancestor's labors if this is what so fools got with so little effort? And to top it all off, they got magic. Actual. Functioning. Magic. It just wasn't fair.

But that was alright. You were used to being subservient to those arrogant fools before. It might take some begging, some pleading, but eventually they would give in.

Except they didn't.

You try everything, as do your kin. Begging, pleading, threats and promises. You offer money, gold, jewels and other valuable trinkets. You offer the secrets of the Necrontyr, hard fought and hidden masteries that took you millions of years to obtain. You offer them worlds, protection, and riches beyond measure. You offer them you lives, your greatest tales and artistries, and eventually choke down the bitterness of such a thing and offer servitude and worship. It isn't enough.

The great bulwark, the mighty Necrontyr Empire, starts to splinter. Rage and bitterness runs rampant, the blame being cast on everyone. The ambassadors had offended them somehow. Some dynast or the other had met and arranged some deal beforehand. How could the Silent King let this happen? Maybe if he were better, they would have acquired such wonders themselves long ago. Maybe this was his fault. Maybe this happened because he was a bad king. And so kin fought with kin, and the whole world you once knew began to unravel.

Then the Silent King, the very last you later realize, comes forth to speak. His name is Szarekh, and your friend and comrade Xanxas had always been an ardent supporter of his. He looks troubled and regretful during his address, a departure from the usual steely nature of his speeches, and you soon realize why. No matter how you ask, the Old Ones will not share their knowledge with you. So you won't ask.

The first war in heaven is short and brutal. Your kin are vastly superior soldiers and commanders, strategies honed from an eternity of warring over what little resources they had. Your weapons were sharper and your ships crushed theirs, for both on the ground and in the void they were unused to wars, especially such a brutal and vicious one. Your men were all extremely determined, and bound by an unbreakable honor code that urged them forward at every turn. Even if it didn't, they would still be willing to die for this. It was a prosperous and glorious future they fought for, and an end to living in pain as tumors ravaged your body and genetic flaws stole away your lives. It was a future where scholars and leaders lived forever, instead of burning brightly but briefly, living as grandiosely as they could before the cruelty of your home stole their lives, no matter how far they were born from it. It was a great future, a kind future. A future where fathers no longer had to bury their sons.

But it was a future that was not to be. You gave all you had for this war, everyone did. Your fortune, you home, your friends and you kin. Your husband, a political marriage as most were, went out to defend some distant rim world. The Old Ones dropped it into a black hole. You daughter went out, so eager to bring honor to her family, to her mother and impress her with her deeds. You let her go, as an act of loyalty and because you must. As a reward, several weeks later you were given a box. It went right next to the empty one belonging to you husband. You suffered through it, confident that your sacrifice would be worth it in the end, even as you friends met similar fates. It wasn't. The Old Ones had to great an advantage in the warp. An insurmountable on it turned out. It wasn't the powers it gave them, no those were countered early. Some of the first great innovations of the war were the shadow ankh and the gloom prisms, which blossomed into the Night shroud barriers and eventually Null field matrixes. It wasn't their speed, you were faster. It wasn't their stealth, shadow looms and the like had been in service for a very long time. It was that the warp gave them access to faster than light movement.

It wasn't that you didn't have the same. You had long ago mastered teleportation. But teleportation was not truly what was meant by the term. It was also limiting, and did not allow you to move your fleet around. The massive constructs you used to connect your empire could only move so many people, and were vulnerable in a way a fleet wasn't. This let them crush you again and again by putting their entire might against individual worlds. And then it was over. The left you race to die, alone and forgotten, an example to all those who would challenge them. So you were cast aside from memory, as fools who dared to believe in something greater.

That's when the rage struck. Loss and grief, failure and resentment ran rampant, and the blame was piled up at the Silent King's feet. And thus the second wars of secession began. These are not like the first ones. These are bloodier, much more brutal, and are fought by those who had just been calling each other brothers not even a year before. They are made worse by the invention of a new metal, Necrodermis it is called, and at long last the achievement of faster than light travel through the invention of inertialess drives. Oh what you would have given for these earlier, but the young prodigy Szeras, their creator, is just that, young. It is not his fault about the bad timing.

The wars seem to last forever. What few friends you have left either die or defect, and you fight for you Silent King. Was it out of loyalty? Was it out of respect or need? Was it because you last remaining friend begged you to? Does it really matter? He doesn't smile anymore, Xanxas, that is. The war was hard on everyone, but on the dynasts supreme commanders it was the worst. The pain and guilt, magnified by the wars conclusion, broke them all in different ways. The formerly generous Imotekh showed a disdain for the civilian populous, seemingly coming to the conclusion that the wars end was the fault of those who didn't fight. Azdereon began using subterfuge and distasteful tactics, coming dangerously close to the crossing the honor codes' strictly defined lines in an attempt to not fail when it mattered most again, and Tlazolt had cut off his own face. Zandrekh had developed a strange and deep rooted dementia that his dear friend and Vargard Obyron desperately tried to unravel. Worst of all was Maktlan Kutlakh. There had always been something…not right with him you had thought, but his use was great and his power magnificent, having defeated several Old Ones single handedly, taking great pleasure in their humiliation. When it was all for naught, all he knew was rage. It was then, during these wars of secession, that he became known as the world killer. You met briefly during that time, and he and Xanxas had gotten along well enough. That was your first warning sign. The second was months later when Xanxas called you to his quarters. He had seen better days. His eyes were bloodshot and a thin stream of blood had left red marks staining his face, as if he had been crying tears of blood. You asked him if he had been sleeping, and he told you when he had last slept, claiming it to be a couple days ago. The worry grew when you recognized the date as months prior. He then asked a question that would be repeated many times millions of years later. Was this all there was? Unending war and bloodshed, until their species killed itself off? Maybe, he mused looking over yet another battlefield map, there isn't anything else. Maybe he should just burn it all. The next week he had completed yet another conquest with near perfect stratagem and horrifying brutality. He earned a new title, the desolator they called him. You tried to ignore the whispers. He was fine you told yourself. Your last friend was perfectly fine you lied as hard as you could, thinking back to the kind man who slept in the field with his troops and shared many a memory with you. He was perfectly sane, just a little stressed you tried to tell yourself. It didn't work.

All things came to an end, these wars were no exception. At long last the Silent King found something to unify his people once more. So on roads of starlight the gods descended, led by the golden skinned messenger. They claimed to be enemies of the Old Ones, and offered to help. The dynasties rallied at the thought of vengeance, and at the end of one war began to scheme for the next. Then, the gods offered to solve the age old dilemma. Immortality, just like theirs. The some Crypteks warned against it, but what did they know? Where had they been when the galaxy was torn apart? Where had been their "advice" when brother turned against brother? How little it was worth you thought. The only way something could go wrong was if something attacked their souls, stole them during the transfer. But there was only you and your allies here, how could that happen?

The betrayal was swift and unexpected. They had given the g- no, the C'tan now, everything. Bodies and knowledge, allegiance and worship, and they had thrown it all away out of pure, uncaring, greed. You looked upon you people, the lost civilians and the ravaged immortals, and tried to weep, only to find even that had been taken from you. So instead you scream.

The second part of the war in heaven was quite different form the first. Undying, freed from the frailties of the flesh, and with the inertialess drive, the Old Ones stood no chance before you. The C'tan helped of course, but you were so consumed with rage you didn't care. This was their fault. If they had just given in, none of this would have happened! This tragedy would have never played out! So you made them pay. You hunted down and killed every Old One in the galaxy. The create hundreds, then thousands, then millions of species to fight you. It doesn't matter. New gods and what will be called daemons are born of or made by the Old Ones and these new species. They are killed to the last, Ahmontekh himself leading this effort. They create vast machines and living constructs, the first pseudo-daemon engines, larger than stars with guns greater than supernovae. You war machines shred them. The hide in the warp and call forth odd creatures that strike at the both of you, the first daemons and their gods acting as an unprecedented threat. To your ability to kill the old ones first of course. You utterly destroy them for their audacity. They hide deep in the webway, where you cannot get at them. The C'tan teach you its secrets, leading to the creation of the Dolmen Gates. As you strike down the last Old One, your plotting comes to a head. After all, the Old Ones weren't you only enemies. The C'tan were greatly lessened by self-cannibalism and the greatest war there ever shall be, even greater weakened by the greatest of them, Tsara'nogga, having the audacity to feel bad about his actions and forever depart the galaxy. Even in this state, the put up quite the fight. They were attacked from behind with the full might of the universe compressed into a single blow, and they still managed to devastate you before they went down. Even worse was what happened next. The Eldar, who had cowered in the depths of the webway throughout the war, challenged your now depleted forces with their fresh armies. Daemons surge from the warp in all shapes and sizes, enslavers in particular filling the vanguard. The Krork rise resurgent, and once more you are forced to face innumerable odds.

Except you don't. Your Silent King, in his final order, tells you to sleep, and that he is sorry. He says that this is his fault, and that he is your king no longer. You are free to pursue your destiny, and are to restore the Necrontyr Empire to what it once was. Your king will leave the galaxy, never to return. You will wait, and let these fools destroy themselves. You will retake all that there is in this galaxy for yourself and your kindred. You will regain flesh and your race will flourish once more. But for now, you will sleep.

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Sixty million years have passed since that day. You awake to a changed galaxy. Maybe you awaken during the dark age of technology, and struggle to survive, or maybe you awaken during the age of strife and have a grand old time. Maybe you awaken during the great crusade and have to consolidate your forces to avoid destruction, or maybe you awaken like most do at the end of M41, at the twilight of mankind.

Things just aren't the same anymore, not without the Silent King. Old grudges flare up, and it's every dynasty for itself. Many lost their Phaerons during the war, and fall into infighting. You hear Imotekh is Nemesor no longer, and that his dynast has moved from third to most powerful. You don't know how to feel about that. The Phaeron you once served perished like so many others, leaving his thieving cousin in charge of the dynasty. Perhaps this is the chance to be free of the fools you served so long ago, a chance for you dynasty to seize greatness by itself. Or perhaps you stick with you old allies, because you owe them, and because they stood by you through the worst of things, through a war that broke reality itself and they are like brothers to you. Or maybe you stay with them because as weak as they now are you are weaker, and you can tell another dynast has been eyeing you territory for some time. They keep their oaths to you, because you are Necrons and oaths mean something to you. You hire wandering crypteks whose dynasts fell long ago, and desperately scramble to recover what few worlds you have left. Sometimes they were overrun by the newer races, leading to a vengeful purge of all life on its surface. Sometimes these new races are to strong, and you have to retreat with your remaining forces, swearing that this will not go unpunished and apologizing to those you could not avenge. Sometimes the world was lost to marauding Eldar, or to some celestial disaster. In the case of the former, you hunt them down and draw a sense of cold satisfaction from their screams. In the case of the latter, you can only rage impotently at the cruelty of fate and the uncaring cosmos.

Sometimes though, it is your own men who have taken the world from you. Not all Necrons came out of the great sleep intact, and in their madness you are forced to put them down. Sometimes, it is even worse and the world is overrun by deranged and mutated versions of your kin. Much later you learn of Kutlakh's greatest sin, and curse his folly. In this case, you are forced to burn the world to ash, mercilessly slaughtering those who would have died for you so that their curse spreads no further. You try to tell yourself that it is a mercy killing, that you are easing their suffering. It doesn't help, and deep, deep inside you, a hollowness begins to grow. As you gaze upon the dying world, writhing in its death throes, you can't help but wonder if what you old friend said so long ago had some merit. Maybe you should just burn it all…

Eventually, you meet up with you old allies, and plans are made, vows reaffirmed. You meet your old friend once more, and he seems more a tired old man than the engine of arcane death he once was. You exchange stories and tactics, rosters of who survived and who didn't, and go your separate ways. You share some laughs, and it almost feels like things are the way they once were. You find that the Eldar are still around, and in their folly ravaged the galaxy far worse than you could have ever feared. You hunt them down time and time again, shattering the soul stones, their craft worlds again and again. You do it because you want to, because this is what they deserve. You do it for vengeance, for the fallen, and because this is all their fault. Whatever the reason is, you take a cold satisfaction from their cries, and the children of Eldanesh slip closer and closer to the end of their race, as they always have.

Sometimes you fight these "orks", the greatly lessened descendants of the Krork, and feel good about how your race has endured and theirs has not. Sometimes you fight the Tau, and laugh at their naivety. They won't last very long in this galaxy you think. Sometimes you fight the humans, in all shapes and sizes. Apparently this is due to some form of religious dispute. You feel a great disdain for their clinging to a corpse on a throne, and even greater disdain for those who abandoned one god only to chain themselves to another. Sometimes, you fight your kin.

Whether it is greed or need, madness or genius, and ancient debt or an ancient grudge, many dynasties look upon one another and realize that there is no longer a silent king to stop their actions. It is like the wars of secession all over again, except this time there is no Silent King to put an end to it, no one to unify behind. You, like many others rally to Imotekh's side, maybe because you have faith in his leadership or maybe because he is the best of many options. Maybe it is because of an old debt, or maybe it is because your allies do as well. Maybe it doesn't matter.

You hear of the great hole in space, and that daemons are pouring out and into the materium like they did so long ago. You hear they destroyed you pylons. There is talk of a new project, a great warding to stave off the immaterium until the end of time. Maybe you help, maybe you don't. Maybe you don't think it matters, you destroyed them before, and you can do it again. Or maybe you hate them, despise them with an unnatural passion that borders on obsession. They are far too similar to the old ones, to those who shattered your race, and the ones who are responsible for taking all of your friends and brothers in arms. Responsible for you family never coming home. So in a fit of rage you attack some world, let's call it delta three, that recently fell to some chaos marines of the black legion, or the word bearers, or one of a thousand other war bands. Perhaps you descend from the sky like the vengeful dead, and engage their troops in honorable combat. Perhaps you bomb them and shred them from the skies and move in when there is no resistance left, for what honor could a band of mutants and daemons truly have? Maybe you burn their newly acquired world to ash with orbital guns, your old hatreds overcoming your desire to take this world for your own. Maybe they flee to the warp, cursing vile xenos, or perhaps they encounter you, and flee in terror from something so antithetical to their very being. Perhaps they had never heard of you before, and perish confused and bewildered. Perhaps, in your rage, you kill them too quickly for them to think at all.

Time passes, and more and more of your kin come online. Perhaps some old friends and allies are amongst them, or perhaps they are all dead. Perhaps you unify peacefully, welcoming each other with open arms, because you were brothers during the war in heaven and a mere sixty million years hasn't changed that. Or perhaps it did, and they betray you due to some long forgotten grudge carefully nurtured since time immemorial. Perhaps they did it because they were deceived, or because they swore loyalty to another overlord, and now are honor bound to face you, as you are to face them. Perhaps you reconcile, and laugh it off like it was some kind of sick joke. Perhaps you don't, and they leave this realm cursing your name, and that hollowness within you grows a bit more.

It is about this time that you first hear of the true enemy. Them. The Tyrant beasts. The galactic locusts. The great devourer. The Tyranids. It is with dawning horror that you realize the completely unprecedented threat that you face. The come in fleets, one by one claiming more and more of this galaxy as they do. World after world is lost, and in the flames of war those few comrades you have left grow closer from the crucible of pain and loss. Charnovokh is ravaged, the whole dynasty painting themselves blue in mourning. Perhaps you mourn with them, in memory of countless kinsmen denied even an afterlife, or perhaps you hand out condolences, but feel deeply satisfied that your enemies have weakened one another, because those Charnovokh dogs were no kin of yours. Perhaps an ancient grudge urges you forwards to strike at this weakened foe, or an equally ancient debt demands you save them.

It'll be okay you tell yourself, there are still billions of tombworlds left unawakened. We can just wait and stand as one to face this new threat. But awakening takes time, time you don't have. One by one, the big names of the dynastic forces are getting up and taking notice of this new enemy, the traveler and ineffable, the Stormlord and the diviner, there are even rumors of the Silent King himself showing up to work with primitives, which you find unlikely. They form awakening war cells, some even forming crusades as they leave behind all they know for the sake of their species. Your friend departs to investigate these rumors, but returns when the third wave, Leviathan they are calling it, pushes deep into your territory, turning many worlds into vicious charnel houses.

The primitives try to fight in their own way, but only manage to swell this new foe's numbers beyond all measure by directing the ORKS of all things at them. Worse still, now of all times the forces of the immaterium charge out of the eye, and clash with you kin. You should help, you should go and fight this "Black Crusade", stop their rampage across the stars. Or maybe you should go and help you allies and friend with these extragalactic horrors, before they take what little you have left. Or maybe you should stay and defend your own world, as that is where they are headed next. Maybe you should stay. Maybe you should go. Maybe you should sacrifice what little you have left to preserve yourself, or maybe you should risk yourself and all you have to protect the few things you view as still having value. Maybe, maybe, maybe. That's what it is like to be a Necron.


End file.
